Information Theory of Molecular Communication: Directions and Challenges

TL;DR

This paper reviews the mathematical challenges and techniques in applying information theory to molecular communication, highlighting its interdisciplinary nature and proposing a new problem to advance the field.

Contribution

It brings attention to the unique mathematical challenges in molecular communication and introduces a specific information theoretic problem inspired by this domain.

Findings

Identifies key mathematical challenges in molecular communication

Reviews existing information theoretic techniques applied to MC

Proposes a new information theoretic problem for MC

Abstract

Molecular Communication (MC) is a communication strategy that uses molecules as carriers of information, and is widely used by biological cells. As an interdisciplinary topic, it has been studied by biologists, communication theorists and a growing number of information theorists. This paper aims to specifically bring MC to the attention of information theorists. To do this, we first highlight the unique mathematical challenges of studying the capacity of molecular channels. Addressing these problems require use of known, or development of new mathematical tools. Toward this goal, we review a subjective selection of the existing literature on information theoretic aspect of molecular communication. The emphasis here is on the mathematical techniques used, rather than on the setup or modeling of a specific paper. Finally, as an example, we propose a concrete information theoretic problem that was motivated by our study of molecular communication.